Cameroon is not a nation. It is a debt engine. A collapsing empire fed by lies, loans, and illusions. A country spending the future in the present. A poor country pretending to be rich. An economy built entirely on external debt. A system so damaged that even a century of competent leadership cannot repair.
By Kemi Ashu, Independentist Contributor.
Babylon is falling. Not gradually. Not quietly. The economic foundations of La Republique du Cameroun have reached a point of irreversible collapse. The nation survives today only through borrowed time and borrowed money. This editorial exposes the numbers, the rot, and the inevitability of the downfall.
THE DEBT SPIRAL THAT CANNOT BE REVERSED
The last elections alone plunged the country into seventy billion francs of debt. The presidential inauguration added seven billion more. Another seventy billion vanished with the political theatre surrounding the arrest of Tchiroma. These are not developmental expenditures. They are symptoms of a system that survives through spectacle, not governance.
THE ECONOMIC FREE FALL
For over a month, heavy military deployments stretched across the Grand North, draining the treasury. The Douala port ground to a halt. Camrail could not access the region. Billions evaporated in days. Another three-day nationwide shutdown is expected before the end of November. Investors are terrified. Confidence is collapsing.
THE IMPOSSIBLE BURDEN OF EXTERNAL DEBT
Every month, fifty billion francs must be paid just to service external debt. Failure to pay equals national default. New loans keep flooding in: One hundred thirty-seven billion for the Douala to Bafoussam road. Ninety-five billion for Douala international airport. Twenty-three billion for the new customs headquarters. These are not achievements. These are IOUs written against a bankrupt future.
PUBLIC COMPANIES ON LIFE SUPPORT
State companies are drowning: Camrail, Camwater, Camtel, Camairco, Hysacam together claim more than seventy-five billion owed to them. Sonara owes four hundred billion. CDC owes sixty-five billion. These debts exist because of decades of mismanagement, not growth.
A GOVERNMENT BURIED UNDER ITS OWN BILLS
The Yaounde to Nsimalen highway alone carries a debt of one hundred fifty-five billion. Unpaid domestic debt is approaching one trillion. Salaries and pensions cost one hundred billion every month. Nine hundred billion was thrown into the black hole of buying back Eneo, which was auctioned for only twenty-three billion. Between twenty twenty-two and twenty twenty-four, more than five hundred million was looted from the mining sector. International litigations pile up: Magil, Coq Sportive, Tollcam, Sundance, and others.
THE COST OF ENDLESS WARS
The Ambazonia war remains a financial abyss. The Boko Haram war continues to consume resources with no victory in sight. Thousands of soldiers have died with no strategic gain. Meanwhile, the presidential family flaunts extravagance, and the administration drowns in waste. Fecafoot burns hundreds of millions on a single match. Vehicles are purchased endlessly even as the treasury dries up.
THE EXPENSES OF UPCOMING ELECTIONS
Two more elections are scheduled for December twenty twenty-five. In LRC, elections are not civic exercises. They are billion-franc opportunities for looting. Officially it is logistics. Unofficially it is theft. Salaries and pensions remain unsettled.
Sonara reconstruction will demand another six hundred billion. The Kribi refinery and Limbe Port will require more borrowing. Treasury bonds compound every year like a slow-motion explosion.
BABYLON HAS FALLEN
Cameroon is not a nation. It is a debt engine. A collapsing empire fed by lies, loans, and illusions. A country spending the future in the present. A poor country pretending to be rich. An economy built entirely on external debt. A system so damaged that even a century of competent leadership cannot repair. Yet some Anglophones still choose to believe in Babylon.
History will judge them harshly. Babylon is collapsing. The pillars have cracked. The ground has shifted. And nothing can save it now.
Kemi Ashu
Leave feedback about this